I blush now when I consider the terms of endearment in which our letters of those days were penned. Hours we spent writing them. The most indiscreet scion of Pittsburgh aristocracy never committed himself more idiotically (to repent subsequently in curses and coin) than Nathan and I described our holiest, hottest feelings for the edification of those little snobs. So the intriguing epistles were indited and delivered. The kissing of Bernice-Theresa was on! Nathan and I sensed little of that concert. We were too much occupied visioning the epochal thing to ensue as its aftermath. The concert began, ran its course and ended. And the Dresden Doll never appeared more bewitching than she did upon that platform. Two small boys caught each other’s eyes and wiped perspiration from youthful brows. The fatal day and hour had come. Did we have the nerve to go through with it? Only the fear of each thinking the other cowardly held us from fleeing that church when the organist began the postlude. It had been a beautiful spring afternoon and during the concert a thunderstorm played above the village. But later the sun broke through upon a sweet and dripping world, and the weather gave our elders no cause to tarry. The two girls, silly and giggling, held converse with other little girls up near the altar rail. They had signified by signs and semaphoring to which grown folk have no code-book, that they would wait and consider the momentous things we had to propound. And the church continued to empty and the janitor to close the windows. Nathan and I stood waiting in the vestry. It was shadowed out there. I occupied a doorway at one side. I saw the two little girls finally coming down the center aisle, and made a sign to Nat. He nodded. His limbs were turning to tallow; he was hoping he would not faint at the peak of the conspiracy when nerve alone was required to see it through. At the next to the last pew the two girls parted. Elinore sidled off between the seats to make her way to my door. Bernie kept on and stepped into the vestry. The instant she appeared, all the pent-up intrigue of weeks galvanized in Nathan. I am not certain where he kissed her, but at the shock of a small boy hurtling himself dramatically from the shadows, the Dresden Doll recoiled and shrieked and wilted. Nathan exploded his kiss, trusting it to hit its mark. He sensed much talcum powder and cologne in his nostrils, contact with adolescent flesh, sweet and soft and warm. Then, at the instant of glorious success, the wrath of God broke from the heavens and consumed him as the fire that blasted Sodom. From the skies above, from the earth, from the waters beneath the earth, from somewhere came a Voice, a terrible, blasting, annihilating Voice: “Here! Here! Here! What the devil’s comin’ off here, anyhow?”